The extent to which the government has resorted to power of incumbency in the run-up to the local council elections borders on shameful.
Practically every government everywhere in the democratic world takes advantage of incumbency but some administrations manage to make an art of the way they exploit opportunities to get maximum benefit for their party at both national and local elections.
It can hardly be sheer coincidence that negotiations over a raft of projects or ventures all happened to come to a conclusion in the few days before the local council elections. Even the inauguration of the interconnector, linking Malta’s energy system to the power grid on the continent, was purposely left to the last minute of the campaign for the party to exact the last possible ounce of propaganda for the ruling party.
When in Opposition, former Prime Minister Alfred Sant used to complain bitterly about the excesses of incumbency resorted to by the Nationalist administration. However, matters have not changed much since then. On the contrary, they appear to have got worse. This runs directly against the expectations of those who voted for Joseph Muscat and his party in the last general election, thinking – quite mistakenly as it turned out – that he really meant what he said when he promised to usher in a new way of doing politics.
Two years down the line, these voters, many of who must have voted for the Labour Party for the first time, have watched Dr Muscat fool the electorate on key governance promises. His government has grossly abused the power of incumbency, turning the local councils elections into a contest between the State, acting on behalf of the ruling party, and the Opposition.
The landslide majority the Labour Party won at the last general election has made it become, now that it is in government, increasingly arrogant, as shown by the way it is pushing through new ventures or deals. In the latest case, for example, concerning the bailout of Café Premier, it even chose to sideline the government’s own property department.
As with other shortcomings committed over the past two years, such as the way it launched the passport sale scheme, Dr Muscat brazenly dismissed the unorthodox way it handled the Café Premier deal as a “mistake”. But so many mistakes have been made already that uncommitted voters are hardly to blame if they conclude that Dr Muscat is throwing his commitment to good governance to the wind.
His government is definitely not acting differently to other administrations. Dr Muscat is banking on other matters in the bid to preserve his party’s popularity – the energy tariff cuts, the turnaround in the operations of Enemalta, the continued expansion of the economy, and the creation of new jobs.
While all this is most positive, it remains to be seen if the government’s growing arrogance and conceit will cancel the benefits out. The way it blatantly resorted to the power of incumbency is unlikely to be lost on those who believed that Dr Muscat would not do this.
The fact that some administrations have done the same, or worse, is no justification for the Labour government doing likewise. Time is most definitely on Dr Muscat’s side but, once disillusioned, uncommitted voters are likely to exercise greater caution when they next come to vote in a general election.